CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND DESIGN 3.1 Introduction
3.7 Challenges encountered when collecting data
Conducting field research yields different results. No fieldwork is the same. Fieldwork poses its own challenges and excitement, as a given group of people respond in different ways to investigations being conducted. Although there are a number of books that give advice on conducting fieldwork, these books are based on a particular researcher’s experiences.
Although the advice is of utmost importance, it bears noting that they may not always be used in every society and/or community as people behave differently towards a certain kind of investigation and towards the researcher.
Various things like the researcher’s gender, race, appearance, or whether the research is conducted in an urban or rural area affect the responses and the behaviour that the researcher may encounter when conducting research. A researcher should have some basic knowledge of the social dynamics of the place where the research would be conducted. Without the knowledge of a place, the researcher would not be able to accurately predict the reaction of the respondents to the needs and the objectives of the research. In relation to this research the researcher is based in Grahamstown-Makhanda and is well versed in the culture of the area.
In most instances researchers find themselves having to explain the objectives of the research and not collecting the data needed. Although it is important to outline the objectives of the research to respondents, this does not guarantee that they would complete questionnaires or
41 avail themselves for interviews. It does happen that after a lengthy explanation of the
research and its objective, respondents do not see the need to participate. Some respondents refused to complete the questionnaires when it was clear that they would not get any financial reward.
In some instance, as I was collecting the data I was accused of working for the government and wanting to take people’s names to use them for government purposes. Regardless of the fact that people’s names are recorded in the national records at the Department of Home Affairs, some respondents refused to fill in questionnaires or allow themselves to be
interviewed because they felt that their names were going to be sent all over the world. This was regardless of being informed that their names were only going to be used only for this research.
Various researchers including Neethling (2000), Koopman (1986), Shabalala (1999),
Sumbwa (1997), Herbert and Bogatsu (1990), Thipa (1984), Moyo (1996), Asante (1996) and Turner (1992) among others, in various ways attest that names among African people are significant, profound, important and not given at random. Among some South Africans, however, a name is just a name and nothing more. It is for this reason that they find it not just odd but time wasting for someone to do research on names and naming patterns. These people, as a result do not want to respond to research questions because they fear that their names are going to be used for political and other reasons, and not for the research, because they are of the opinion that nothing could be done with a name. If such a situation arose then they could simply withdraw from the research.
3.7.1 The interview questions
As straight forward as the questions were and even written in English and isiXhosa to help with understanding, some participants were unable to understand some of the questions, therefore opting not to answer them (see Appendix 3 for questions and Appendix 4 for sample interviews). For example question 8: ‘What do you think is the role of the community with regards to amaXhosa surnames and naming?’ some felt that this question was difficult and vague, therefore just giving any answer they thought fit for the question. I think as the researcher I also phrased the question in a manner that was confusing, instead the question could have been as follows: ‘In the formulation of surnames and names what is the role of the community?’
42 Another example was question was number 4: ‘What are you thoughts on ‘European’
surnames used by amaXhosa?’ Some participants were reluctant to answer this question because they did not want to have negative views about these surnames, therefore they gave safe answers to the question. During the interviews, some participants were not able to finish answering all the questions because they were scared to lose their place in the que but lucky enough they had answered most of the questions and some had answered all the questions.
Some participants did not want to participate, not because of the nature of the research but because they had been waiting for a long time in the que, and were tired.
Another challenge during the interviews was that some participants were uncomfortable being recorded while talking, therefore as the researcher I had to write down all the information I was given. During the timeframe of collecting data on some days there were few people to interview and therefore I missed the target of interviews to be collected during a day and that caused the data collecting to fall behind.
3.7.2 Recording Research
Recording research interviews is a great way to capture qualitative data for a thesis or dissertation research and ensures descriptive validity. While taking notes and writing down your observations is important, it is likely you are going to miss out on some details. An audio recording of an interview also allows you to refer back to the interview and take a fresh look at the interview data. These are some of the advantages of recording interviews in qualitative research. Tape recorders or recording devices such as a cellphone in my case, are crucial when collecting data. After collecting data using a tape recorder or cellphone,
interviews should be transcribed in order to be able to analyse the data collected using the preferred method of data analysis. Transcribing tapes or recorded material however can be time consuming.
The challenges faced with the recording were that some of the interviewees’ voices were not audible enough and that was because of the space the interview was conducted in. Because of noise, on some days of the interview it made the other participants voices not audible enough.
The only way as the researcher to trace what the person was saying was going through the notes I had been writing on the side. Another challenge I had encountered was that I was using a cellphone to record, therefore the phone deleted some interviews and I had to return
43 to Home Affairs to do more research. The recorded interviews have been stored in a safe drive.